PatternExon

The Last Mughal – William Dalrymple

// March 18th, 2007 // books, reading, review

I have now read every book written by William Dalrymple and this is the best. Its not that I havent read something written by him for a while, since I just read In the Shadow. But this one is awesome. I admit that Dalrymple knows how to research but this exquisite. Whatever I have read earlier about the 1857 Uprising (including some fascinatingly massaged history texts in high school) every single write up cites the same excuse – want of sources. But not this one, the sources here are impeccable both in veracity & detail. The mutiny papers in the national archive in India ( generally written in Persian, the court’s official language, or Urdu, the language of the inhabitants of Delhi) & its counterpart in the archive in Britain – Mutiny Papers. As titled, this a description of the last days of Abu Zafar Siraj ud Din Bahadur Shah - the last Mughal Emperor of India. Its the story of Delhi & its fate in the 1857 mutiny. I have to admit that William Dalrymple is an acclaimed Indophile but this one is totally impartial. The sketch is comparable to ‘Is Paris Burning ?’ in both coincidences & the way the characters of the key players is gradually divulged. I have also found a part of the secret – why Dalrymple’s works have this comfortable but still exotic aroma – its the way he uses the persian & urdu words instead of transliterating them to their, now conformed, english equivalents. This leaves a little EM Forrester-like feel, plurality without loss of identity( well almost!). So, a Vazir is not a minister & a tehkhana is not a cellar. I love it. Though, it did take more than a few days reading 500 pages, I am now a bigger fan than ever before.